In less than six months, I am back with a new book by Johana Gustawsson: Yule Island, translated by David Warriner published by the one and only Orenda Books, a frequent quality presence on my blog.
As in the case of Bleeding, Yule Island is not for the faint of heart, but has a story smoothly built, which generously integrated all the many surprising events occurring during the events. From the very beginning until the unexpected end, there are so many twists and changes forcing the reader to leave everything and dedicate the entirety of his or her time to this book.
A successful art expert, Emma Lindhal is requested to assess the art collection of one of Sweden´s richest families. The process takes places at the residence situated on a remote island, where years ago, a young woman was murdered. And as she was delving into classifying the artifacts, there is another crime taking place, also of a young woman. As detective Karl Rosen enters the scene, Emma is joinging forces and minds aiming to discover the culprit.
This members of this unusual task force may look very different at the first sight, but in fact, both do have so many secrets and triggers of the past that make them alike and help at a certain extent to investigate the crimes. The Gothic part of the novel, involving old Norse mythology and rituals is the most unexpected part and makes this crime story unique and tremendously thrilling. It is another layer of reality unfolding, nevertheless a very creative way to write crime stories, that definitely may have correspondents into the everyday reality of crime events.
Yule Islands is a recommended read if you are looking for a different take on crime novels, well written and hard to predict until the very end. The characters do have a dark complexity but good people rarely make a brilliant thriller, anyway.
Rating: 4.5 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour butthe opinions are, as usual, my own
Thanks for the blog tour support x
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